Immigration Reforms: How a Broken System Breaks Communities

From top: Noami Perez, former American Apparel worker who was fired; inside an American Apparel factory; Wide shot of American Apparel factory building, with their advertisement for "Legalize LA." Photo Credit: Patrick Burke

If there’s one thing to be said about the U.S. immigration system, it’s that there’s universal support for change. But when it comes to answers, the viewpoints are all over the map. Congress is planning to make some changes in 2010, but in the meantime, state and federal immigration laws remain confusing and are sporadically enforced. On this edition, we go to two communities sorting through the aftermath of Bush-era federal immigration raids, and to Los Angeles, where American Apparel became the first test case of the Obama administration’s new approach to workplace hiring violations.

This program was funded in part by spot.us, a community supported journalism project.

The Local Aftermath of Bush-era Workplace Immigration Raids

by Andrew Stelzer

Part of President Bush’s approach was to carry out federal raids on workplaces with undocumented immigrants – targeting the workers themselves, not those who hired them. But rather than solving the problem, those raids, for the most part, only made things worse. Making Contact producer Andrew Stelzer visited two communities where the largest raids happened in 2008. He found that when the immigrants were sent away, communities were dismantled.
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In September 2009, we began to see what President Obama’s immigration policy would look like. It played out in Los Angles after American Apparel, a US based clothing company, laid off more than sixteen hundred workers. Instead of facing huge fines for employing undocumented workers, American Apparel laid of its immigrant workforce. On the surface, this might seem like a more humane approach. In a collaboration with Spot.Us Patrick Burke reports from L.A.; where for the community at large, the result may not be that much different from the Bush-era raids.